Across the Universe
I am not sure how I missed this Across the Universe when it was out at the theaters. Actually I am not completely sure it ever made it to a regular run of the mill cinemas or not. Maybe the more artsy ones, but it is truly a shame. A bit of brief checking around suggested that the few people I know who knew about it did not think it was that great. Critically it was mixed at best and financially it grossed roughly half of its budged 45 million to make it. Fortunately, I got to see it and I am of the opposite opinion.
The movie has a good story line and it is indeed a musical. But saying that is a really an understatement. It is perhaps the musical of at least the decade as far as I am personally concerned. All the music throughout the entire movie is indeed from those fabulous four known as the Beatles, using somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty songs written and/or preformed by the Beatles (or individual members thereof).
The entire range of work of the Beatles is represented in the movie, ranging from back in the early years when there was a lot of covers right up through the very end as they were breaking up in the final years. The music of course was not in any chronological order of release, but rather were fit into the story in the order the plot dictated.
Of great interest to me is the fact that most of the main characters too names from the catalog the Beatles have available. I think I counted six, the two main characters being Jude and Lucy. As soon as each character was presented we knew Jude was going to have real down moment and I was waiting for the hopeful lyrics of Hey Jude to come along. I was not disappointed on that account, but the predictable nature of that moment was in itself a comfort of the over all. Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds was a bit tougher to figure out how it was going to work, but being set in the 1960′s it was not that far off either.
One quick note about the movie was the interesting fact that the actor playing Jude at various times, being a young chap from Liverpool seemed to remind me in visage a lot of clips I have seen of Paul, but yet in actions, was much more representative of John, at least based on what I have read about them over the years. I am not sure if that was just an influence of the music in conjunction with the script or if it was as I suspect planned that way.
And one last thing of note is the different styles that were used with some of the music. For instance, hearing Let It Be, starting in the style of the Beatles and moving through to a African-American spiritual style was interesting (and I am left wondering as I write that if that is the politically correctly way of saying that or if I should have left at just gospel, though that brings to my mind my grandparents church and that just is not the same). There is a part of me that likes the new version at least as much as the original, obviously a positive take. Hearing classic Beatles performed by women, either in the original style or more in a Janice Joplin take on things was also a classic change-up that often had me thinking how neat.
Without giving away anymore of the movie, I would encourage you if you like a good romantic movie, a musical, or especially the Beatles, to find a copy of this on DVD. Put it in sometime over the holidays, crank up the sound system, and take an enjoyable break a bit.
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Tobie
